Street children and youth are a vulnerable and often stigmatized group at risk for many negative health outcomes. Despite being disproportionately affected by the HIV pandemic, they have been generally neglected in HIV prevention research.

Colette “Coco” Auerswald, associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health; MPH student Arielle Goldblatt; and their research team conducted a study, the first of its kind, that measured the prevalence and risk factors for HIV among street youth in Kenya, rather than measuring knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to HIV, which has been the focus of most existing research to date. The study, lead by Auerswald and Goldblatt, was published in October in the journal PLOS One.

Co-authors of the study include Maureen Lahiff, Alexandra Minnis, Jessica Lin, all three from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health; Ndola Prata from the Bixby Center for Population, Health and Sustainability at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health; Zachary Kwena, from the Kenya Medical Research Institute; Kawango Agot from the Impact Research and Development Organization in Kisumu, Kenya; and Elizabeth A. Bukusi from the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

Funding was provided by the UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health, the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, Albert Brodie Smith and Margaret Gretchen Smith Scholarship, the UCSF Department of Pediatrics, and the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program Schoeneman Grant.

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The Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability is dedicated to helping achieve slower population growth within a human right framework by addressing the unmet need for family planning. Learn more